Synopses & Reviews
A radiant reflection of contemporary fiction at its best, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 features stories from locales as diverse as Russia, Zimbabwe, and the rural American South. Series editor Laura Furman considered thousands of stories in hundreds of literary magazines before selecting the winners, which are accompanied here by short essays from each of the three eminent jurors on his or her favorite story, as well as observations from all twenty prize winners on what inspired them. Ranging in tone from arch humor to self-deluding obsessiveness to fairy-tale ingenuousness, these stories are a treasury of potential classics.
About the Author
Laura Furman's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, and other magazines. She is the founding editor of the highly regarded American Short Fiction (three-time finalist for the American Magazine Award). A professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, she teaches in the graduate James A. Michener Center for writers. She lives in Austin.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Laura Furman, Series Editor
Old Boys, Old Girls
Edward P. Jones, The New Yorker
You Go When You Can No Longer Stay
Jackie Kay, Granta
Mule Killers
Lydia Peelle, Epoch
The Broad Estates of Death
Paula Fox, Harper's Magazine
The Pelvis Series
Neela Vaswani, Epoch
Conceived
David Lawrence Morse, One Story
The Dressmaker's Child
William Trevor, The New Yorker
Disquisition on Tears
Stephanie Reents, Epoch
Sault Ste. Marie
David Means, Harper's Magazine
Unction
Karen Brown, The Georgia Review
80s Lilies
Terese Svoboda, Indiana Review
Passion
Alice Munro, The New Yorker
The Center of the World
George Makana Clark, The Georgia Review
Wolves
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Prairie Schooner
Girls I Know
Douglas Trevor, Epoch
The Plague of Doves
Louise Erdrich, The New Yorker
Famine
Xu Xi, Ploughshares
Puffed Rice and Meatballs
Lara Vapnyar, Zoetrope: All-Story
Letters in the Snow for kind strangers and unborn children for the ones lost and most beloved
Melanie Rae Thon, One Story
Window
Deborah Eisenberg, Tin House
Reading The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006
The Jurors on Their Favorites
Kevin Brockmeier on "Old Boys, Old Girls" by Edward P. Jones
Francine Prose on "Window" by Deborah Eisenberg
Colm Tóibín on "Passion" by Alice Munro
Writing The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006
The Authors on Their Work
Recommended Stories
Publications Submitted
Permissions